At the weekend I will be attending Dark Millenium, for the first time since 2016. Fairly excited about it, as not only is it a great event, it also happens to be run by the shadowy form of Mr Liam O’Shea, the ‘instinctive behaviour: lurk’ puppet master of the Caledonian Deathwatch. Also, DM happens to represent the last time I ever done anything of note at an event, when I came 2nd in the 2016 event, just before I absconded from proper tournaments for the best part of 3 years. As I’ve documented in my previous blog posts, its been a rough ride getting back into the swing of things, with a few pastings for me – all be it with forces other than the Death Guard. Hoping to see some progress here, though I do appreciate that its going to be a tough one as there are some very good players coming. I’ve put in a bit of practice though, and know what my army should be able to achieve each turn.

So is this a tournament winning list? In all probability, no. To the untrained eye it can appear quite slow, character heavy and really lacking in the tools to take down long ranged, armour heavy armies. I’ve went for the Deredeo instead of the double butcher array Leviathan, and stuck with the unfashionable blight haulers instead of the Death Guard ever present, Plagueburst Crawlers. Nurglings have an almost negligible damage output. The daemon prince is unwinged – you mad bro?

However, it is faster than it looks. The Thousand Sons sorcerer – enslaved to the XIV legion! – blasting out warptime has enabled me to fling the Blight Haulers or a Bloat drone clear across the board into unsuspecting juicy targets for a first strike/distraction carnifex utility. The addition of a Noxious Blightbringer has been an interesting one for me. At first glance, he appears to be one of the myriad, pretty useless elite characters in the Death Guard codex, joining the maligned ranks alongside the Tallyman, the Plague Surgeon and dare I say it, the Biologis Putrifier. He comes in the Dark Imperium box set and whilst being a cool model, I always reckoned his destiny would be forever more being used as a proxy for a Lord or a Plague Marine squad leader. His wargear is certainly a bit poop – a plasma pistol (watch out!), blight grenades, and a cursed plague bell, which he whacks people with in melee and it is Strength: User, no Ap and does flat 2 damage, plague weapon. He’s not rising to command plague fleets anytime soon. However, his Toxin of Misery ability has demanded a second look for me, particularly since I’ve adapted to the DG mantra of footslogging it across the board – when a Death Guard unit chooses to advance within 7″ of a Noxious Blightbringer, roll two dice and discard the lowest. Doesn’t sound ground breaking, but that includes the already fast moving Haulers and Drones, as well as the ever slow Foul Blightspawn, and the footslogger prince. He’s a good force booster, and have liked his influence in the first couple of turns, which is vitally important (for all players, I understand that) for DG players to avoid being majorly outmanouvered by faster armies. Toxin of Misery has a secondary ability to reduce leadership by 1 of enemy units within 7″, and by 2 if its a psyker. Not amazing, but if I ever remember that butcher cannon array’s reduce leadership by 2 as well, it could make people run away faster. All in, he finds a place in some competitive Death Guard builds these days due to his CA18 drop to 55 pts from an un-useable 70 pts.

Footslogger prince – some may think whats the point of not giving a prince wings, but Death Guard depends on synergy as much as the next army, and possibly more than most. A prince makes an excellent warlord, what with the ability to take the supparating plate for the 2+ goodness and mortal wounds, therefore he’s also going to take the only DG warlord trait worth taking in competitive environs – Arch Contaminator. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you what that does, but because of this double synergistic bubble with rerolling 1’s and the plague weapon wounds, there isn’t really much point in the wings. He needs to hang out with his lesser DG minions and make them better, and is handy at digging people out of melee with the lovely 7 claw attacks. I’ve run a wingless prince at the last two events and been pretty happy with him to be honest. Does good work. Wings are a bit of an expensive luxury as well IMO.

Foul Blightspawn – I’m sure everyone is sick of me ranting about these guys so all I’ll say is that getting them more mobile is a good thing. Two of them in the list, and they make a mess of everything from Custodes to Knights, and are the nightmare of any tough warlord characters that I can get them near to. The sawn-off shotgun of the DG.

Bloat drones – best Death Guard vehicle – fast, resilient, near impossible to lock, doesn’t really care about being bracketed.

Blight Haulers – obviously I took nine of these to Cally therefore think they are cool, but I increasingly find that I can’t do without a tri-lobe of these beautiful, disgusting little critters. I use them as my very mobile anvil. They don’t do a great deal to tough units, but those top damage dealing units of your opponent’s armies just cannot delete them quick enough to stop them from literally chewing through all of your opponent’s infantry. Do a fab job of distraction carnifex or chaff terrorisers, and drive opponents nuts. My list has suffered when I haven’t had a squad in the army, and always can be relied upon, now that I know what to use them for.

Deredeos – These guys are solid – good firepower, reasonable toughness, can shoot out of LOS and gain that beautiful legion trait Ineoxarable Advance to move and fire heavy weapons with no penalty. Used them before to good effect. Actually find that with the build of this current list they are mostly being ignored as I fling the drones and haulers forward with the Blightbringer and Warptime, therefore are free to do steady damage throughout the game. Love them.

Poxbringers – good, cheap nurgle daemon HQ unit. Got Miasma and Fleshy abundance on these guys to keep the DG daemon engines running smoothly, and/or the prince if he’s going to get into trouble. Reasonably handy in a melee as well, though can be mulched by dedicated combat characters. Nice strength boost to the DG deamon stuff if in range.

In summary – I’ve seen the list pack and there are some forces I’ll struggle against. I have limited experience against GSC of which there are a few, and a lot of knights will give me a bit of trouble. But this list is deceptively more than the sum of its parts, and might give out a few nasty surprises. I’d love to go 4 and 2 at Dark Millenium, however I’ve had a bit of a nightmare period in real life so i’m happy to just go out and play some games all weekend.

I’ll report back afterwards, with no doubt a troubling amount of egg on my face post event.